When “Rancho Mirage,” about six friends who dish up far more than their fill during a dinner party, premieres at Denver’s Curious Theatre Company Nov. 2, it will have had the benefit of two different productions, one in Boston, the other in Indianapolis. Its next staging will be in Atlanta, thanks to the National New Play Network, an alliance of indie theaters, which Curious has been a vigorous player in.

“I’m a great champion of the New Play Network on several levels. The primary one being that a handful of theaters work together to give a play multiple productions,” Dietz said. “That is completely at odds with what has been the model of Broadway and Off-Broadway and, frankly, the larger regional theaters.”

“I’ve been sending plays to the Denver Center every year since 1982,” Dietz said with a laugh. “But I will tell you, to have this Jackie Robinson play be my first seems very fitting. My folks have passed now but my dad made me a baseball fan. I have an adopted African-American son from Ethiopia. There are a lot of reasons why ‘Jackie & Me’ is very close to my heart.”

In early 2014, Fort Collins’ Bas Bleu Theatre Company will get in on the action when it stages Dietz’s 2008 comedy “Becky’s New Car.”

Dietz grew up in Denver’s Bear Valley neighborhood and attended the University of Northern Colorado. He left the state, “right after college in 1980 and immediately drove my car around the country.” He landed in Minneapolis and that city’s The Playwrights’ Center, where his career took root, first as a director then as a writer. But he always visited Denver.

“She would send him articles, reviews, etc. out of The Post (or The News) about our work in the ‘early years,’ and that’s how we initially became acquainted, believe it or not!” In 2009 Curious staged Dietz’s “Yankee Tavern.”

“I think [Rancho Mirage] has all the traits that make Steven such a dynamic and popular American playwright,” Walton said. “Crackling dialogue, engaging characters, and some really profound insights into our contemporary world.”

All you show tune skeptics, you who snicker at the spectacle of unison-dancing cats or roll your eyes at the first chords of “Don’t Rain on My Parade”: Who’s getting the last laugh now? Because suddenly, being in and grooving on and talking about musicals is the hippest thing going.

The regional premiere of Robert Askins’ provocative “Hand to God” offers equal parts raunchy fun and bloody drama. That may surprise those who’ve heard only about the hilarity of the foul-mouthed sock puppet at the show’s center.